Canned green beans. Major yecchhh! Or almost any kind of beans. (except for frozen or fresh green beans.)
Asparagus. My mother would overcook them until they were practically mush. I hated asparagus until I was an adult and I tried them steamed al dente. That was a big surprise!
Although my parents had canned sauerkraut occasionally, they never forced me to eat it. Again, I finally tried it when I was an adult and found it okay, but not high on my list.
Never cared much for canned peas or canned carrots, either, but at least I could get them down.
I rarely eat egg salad sandwiches these days, but as a kid I loved them.
Tuna salad and tuna casserole were not favorites, but they were okay once in a while.
I don’t remember ever having beets, thank goodness!
There were many more things my mother cooked that I really did like. She used to make small, thick hamburgers using a meat loaf recipe, I think (more like large, flattened meatballs, I suppose). I kind of miss that.
Three things stand out 1. Pigs feet and sauerkraut. 2. Tuna cassarole and 3. powdered milk. Other than those idiosyncracies my mom is a good cook.
Keith
This abomination probably came out of a “Good Housekeeping” magazine. My sister made it, and the rest of the family thought it was wonderful. I was a picky little kid, and even the sight of it made me nauseated. It was a combination of cooked cornmeal mush, hamburger in Mexican tomato sauce, and canned corn. It looked just like what resulted in the toilet the next day after you eat too much corn on the cob. No one could get me to touch it.
Aside – Mom tried to pour too much milk into me. When she wasn’t looking, I would pour it behind the sofa. No one ever seemed to notice.
Oh man, beets were the worst, because I would have to sit at the table until I finished them. It would get to be like 10PM, the beets would be ice cold. I’d finally break down and eat them. : shudder
Hmmm, can’t say there were too many traumatic foods at my place. My mom was a decent cook and if I didn’t like something I didn’t have to eat it, not that there were many foods in that category (this belly took work). Gotta say though - Creamed Corn - yumm. Straight out of the can - cold. Same with Spaghettio’s.
Now, if we can broaden the thread a little…
Traumatic foods at school. I went to this amazingly repressed Catholic school with these killer six-foot nuns. I hesistated too long in lunch line one day and got a big turd pile of kidney beans plopped on my tray. Couldn’t throw them out, no way, there were poor kids starving in places I couldn’t pronounce. Franken-nun stood there and threatened me with bodily harm and hell if I didn’t eat them.
I learned, to my dismay, that even the family dog wouldn’t accept beets. I tried to feed him mine…he’d eat damn near anything else, but not beets. They look even more like innards when you see them in the dog’s dish! I got in extra trouble once, because Casey failed to eat the evidence that I’d snuck away from the table.
When I wss a kid my mother was not the swiftest of cooks. HH and tuna Helper were on the menu when my dad was working nights - he did the majority of the cooking. It took until I was over 30 before she learned to not cook vegatables until the water was the color the veggie was originally. for 15 years she insisted I was undercooking them whenever I was at home (she loves my being home because I do the cooking).
My my my, what a bunch of picky eaters. The same people who are so picky about what they put in their mouths are not so careful about what they put in their brains and will watch survivor so they can see a guy eat a beaver. I will eat pretty much anything but I refuse to watch junk TV. Does that count?
Macaroni and cheese, and Polish sausage. Not mixed together, but served at the same meal - at least once a week for my entire childhood.
After I moved out it was probably a good 4 years before I even BOUGHT a box of mac and cheese, and only then because hubby and child #1 love it.
My mom at least never forced us to drink milk, much to the shock of our relatives, who thought my sister and I would grow up to be midgets ;). She’s 5’6 and I’m 5’7 1/2 , and we’re taller than the rest of the women in our family.
My sister ate Brussels sprouts for years thinking they were “baby cabbages” and when she found out their real name, refused them from that point on.
Mom wasn’t too bad a cook, just had a limited repertoire (sp?) and my dad refused to eat any meat other than beef or pork, except for turkey on Thanksgiving Day, so we had a LOT of repetition. Also, he can’t tolerate spicy food so everything was pretty bland.
I tryto be more creative and think I usually do a pretty good job. My kids are 3.5 and 7 months and neither are or will be forced to eat anything they don’t like. Our rule is you have to at least try it, and if you put it on your plate, you eat it, and it works pretty well. Ketchup also goes a long way to making dinners happier for my son
** lunasea, ** your dad sounds like my father’s brother! Same kind of discipline.
We didn’t have much money, there were six kids, and boy, my mom could reallllly streettchhh the food budget with some of the garbage along with the same axiom, ‘you have to sit there till you clean up that plate!’
Her favorites, MY horror; hominey grits, lima beans, fish sticks, and something she called ‘hash’, to this day, I don’t know what it was, except some potato mixture fried in a pan.
Have you any idea what hominey grits taste like cold?? My story was similiar to the egg salad, I wouldn’t eat anything else, and she kept the hominey grits waiting for me day after day. When I finally did break down, I promptly threw up IN the same plate. Good ole paddle time.
For me it wasn’t childhood but at my boyfriend’s parents’ house.
They would all eat greasy rancid stuff all day and ram it down my throat.
slimy okra
rancid-rind country-cured ham
oily red-eye gravy over nasty over-salted grits
And they kept calling me Honey and Sugar and saying I would have to eat it, it was all they had, and my BF said it would be rude to refuse.
I did it on one trip.
On the next trip, I split right at dinner and told them all to shove it, and went home. Fortunately it was my car, so Mama’s Boy got stranded and missed a day of work.
A ketchup sandwich? Just bread. . . and ketchup? No, thank you.
Now I was a picky eater as a kid. Not that I was ever served truly horrible food that often, I was just picky. Two bad instances stick out in my mind.
First, I was friends with the kid next door, so I would often find myself over there for lunch. Well, one time his Mom served up a nice tall glass of powdered milk. Now, I don’t even like regular milk, let alone the monstrosity that powdered milk is. I tried to drink it, I really did. However, I physically gagged and almost threw up on her table. What kind of people serve powdered milk in this day and age?
The second instance took place during a drive though Canada. We stopped off at some place and I ordered a hamburger. When I got it it tasted funny, so I wasn’t eating it. Since I was a finicky eater they told me to eat it anyway. Well, I only made it through several more bites. Finally my mom tried it. “Why, this hamburger is spoiled.” I’ve distrusted Canadians ever since.
(Just kidding, I in no way endorse Canadian-bashing in any form whatsoever. I, personally, love Canadia.)
Oddly enough, I now love all sorts of food I would never have touched when I was a kid, and vice versa.
When I was seven, I loved nutter butter cookies. You know, the ones that look like little peanut guys? Well I got food poisoning and had the second worst week healthwise ever. As soon as I could hold down solid food, I had some NB’s as a treat. You guessed it, They made me sick! To this day I shudder at the thought
Hijacking my own message: the new monthly flavor at Baskin Robbins tastes just like them!! Oh the Horror! I tried a taste and nearly puked in front of the entire store. I had to wash my mouth out …shudder…
Another thing I ate as a child needs a little background. Myself, my mom and my stepdad moved into a religious commune in inner city Chicago when I was eight. We had meals communally (natch’) and the quality was suspect to say the least. In the industrial kitchen they would boil dozens of chickens to be turned into whatever pathetic casserole they could muster. Us kids would plead for the chicken skin and make them into sandwiches with government bread (pick off the little spots)and cold butter
OH MY GOD!! I just made myself gag!! Note to self: self induced vomiting-BAD IDEA
uh, i gotta go now…
I’ve had issues w/ many of the foods mentioned here.
Liver and Onions - my mom made this maybe twice a month, because liver was supposedly “good for you.” My father (who had been divorced from my mom since I was 1 1/2), would ALWAYS mention that my mother’s liver and onions was his favorite meal. The most amusing thing about that was that when I was 10 or so, it came out that liver wasn’t particularly good for you. My mom and step-dad practically high-fived over never having to eat it again. I remember mentioning how my dad loved Mom’s L&O, and Mom laughed and said, “Are you kidding? I only made it because I thought it was healthy. Even I knew it tasted horrible.”
They also seemed to really LOVE sauerkraut. They didn’t make it too frequently, though. Still, we had NO choice about eating it. I haven’t had it once since I moved out of their house.
Oh, and the worst was when they’d make corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day. A - Yick. 2 - In case it wasn’t clear, Mom was a terrible cook. And hell, she wasn’t even Irish, so I swear she was guessing about how it’s made C - They’d always make us eat it, and then say, “Well, you two (meaning my sister and myself) are half Irish, you should appreciate this more than any of us!” Yeah, thanks for the favor, freakshows. Irish people like drinking, too, so hand over the beer.
One isolated incident was scrambled eggs. It was always a big treat for us when they’d decide to make breakfast foods for dinner. Like, we’d have pancakes and bacon and it’d be a grand old time. It was one of the few dinners that all seven kids liked. Of course, the parents had to ruin it by making scrambled eggs one night ( I hated ANY kind of eggs, actually). I already knew from an ill-fated breakfast at my grandparents that scrambled eggs made me queasy - and I told them. However, my stepfather insisted that I was just “spoiled,” and made me eat them. I started gagging and I honestly thought I was going to throw up. I clearly remember him staring me down and saying, “If you throw up on your plate, you can just eat around it.” That’s when I learned that pure force of will can keep you from vomiting - which has helped me since I started drinking. I was around 7 then. Haven’t had scrambled eggs since.
“Anything” Helper (Hamburger, tuna, etc) Blech!
Broccoli, cabbage, rudabega, oakra…Blah! And we never had real butter in the house, only gross margerine. In fact, back in the day my old man would drive down to Illinois and smuggle cases of margerine back to Wisconsin. I hated that shit (still do!)
My mother would make what she called a “crazy dish” about once a month. She would take a bunch of left overs, throw it in a glass dish and bake for an hour. It was so awful that to this day my sibblings and I still throw it up in her face how she commited child abuse via food. She thinks we’re kidding!:rolleyes:
But the ultimate was one time my father made dinner for us while my mother was away. He told my sister to pick out a canned (blech) vegitable out of the cuboard. She found a can with no label. He had all us kids take guesses as to what it was. Corn? Peas? Carrots? Beans?
He opened it…Pumpkin! Canned pumpkin! The sumbitch scooped it out and made us eat it as a vegitable!
I am a tyrant over what I allow my wife to cook for dinner!
I refuse to eat or even try anything I don’t want! The above explains why!
New Year’s Day. I was an adult before I realized it didn’t have to be a horror. See, I grew up in a German-American family in SE Pennsylvania. On NYD the TV was on all day… tuned to whichever Philly station was carrying the Mummers’ Parade. Damn thing lasts AAAAAAALLLLLLLL DAAAAAAYYYYY. It was even on when we were eating our NYD supper, which of course had to be <tada!> PORK AND SAUERKRAUT!
Now, Mom was fairly reasonable. She would make hot dogs and frozen corn for my sister and I to eat. But she would insist on giving us a lecture about how sauerkraut on NYD was a tradition, and how it brought good luck, and how we would like it when we were older. I’m 31 and still hate it. But the worst thing was how the smell would just hang there. Sometimes you could still smell it the next day.
Another horror: chicken pot pie. The Pennsy Dutch kind, with potatoes, noodles and chicken boiled together in one enormous pot. My grandmother would come over and roll out massive amounts of dough on our kitchen table to make the noodles. The problem is that the stuff is utterly tasteless. And here there was no mercy. “But I don’t like chicken pot pie,” I’d whisper desperately to Mom. “Hush! Nanny worked hard at making this. You don’t want to hurt her feelings just because you’re a picky eater, do you?” No, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but then, I didn’t ask her to do all that work, either! Sigh.
Hubby is Norwegian. He was one of five kids, and his mom was also big on stretching the food budget. His “horror” is lungemos, which is basically chopped up cow lungs mixed with starch so they’ll hang together in clumps. Sliced and fried for supper. Oog. :eek: He has also said that he wouldn’t mind never eating whale meat again - that was very cheap back in his childhood and aparently, when fried, gives off a smell reminiscent of cod liver oil.
I don’t force the elder little flodnak to eat anything, but I have found that a spoonful of ketchup helps the green beans go down. (The younger is only six months old and still mostly on mamma juice, though he keeps trying to steal anything I’m eating!)
When I was a kid, I absolutely hated squash, omelets and creamed anything.
Strange, but now there isn’t anything that I just can’t eat. Probably as a result of moving to Japan and having to get used to things like squid-on-a-stick.
The most traumatic meal of my childhood, though, was at my grandparents’ house: kidneys and blood sausage. I ate it, but good god was it disgusting.
Last year when my parents came here to visit me, I got even with them by making them eat sushi. They turned a little green at first, but eventually admitted that it wasn’t that bad.
(The younger is only six months old and still mostly on mamma juice, though he keeps trying to steal anything I’m eating!)
They turned a little green at first, but eventually admitted that it wasn’t that bad.